A feature which blocks internet access when FREEDOME VPN connection is disrupted or being established.
F-Secure FREEDOME VPN includes a killswitch feature to prevent accidental leakage of traffic to the internet.
Should the VPN connection between the FREEDOME VPN client and the server drop for any reason, for example due to a short network outage or while changing from one FREEDOME VPN site to another, the FREEDOME VPN killswitch will notice this. Depending on the settings, it may block the network traffic until the connection to the FREEDOME VPN backend has been established again. In this scenario, only the mandatory network traffic is allowed. In other words, apart from the OpenVPN or IPSEC protocol itself, only the traffic that is required to establish the VPN connection, such as DNS and DHCP, is allowed.
If the user turns off FREEDOME VPN, it will not trigger the killswitch feature. Instead, the network traffic will work normally but naturally not protected by FREEDOME VPN.
There are minor differences in how the killswitch works on different operating systems.
On Mac, the killswitch feature is turned OFF by default. When FREEDOME VPN is in the “connecting…” state, the network traffic outside the VPN tunnel will not be blocked until the connection is established. When the killswitch is turned on, it will block the network traffic even if the reconnection attempts are unsuccessful.